VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — People with thoughts of suicide often spend their lives looking for medication that will make a difference. Left with frustration and despair, they can end those lives themselves.
Although he came close to suicide a couple of times, Navy veteran Matt Erisman found an effective solution. Now, it’s harder for him to get.
“I didn’t want to live anymore,” Erisman said in a Monday interview, talking about his ongoing fall into despair.
It began with the residual pain from a traumatic brain injury that happened while he was fixing an electrical panel that exploded and struck his head.
Erisman spent 20 years in the Navy, but he didn’t want to spend one more day on earth.
“November 4th of 2022 was a day that I decided that suicide was my only way out,” Erisman said about the first time he actively considered suicide, equipped with a plan he doesn’t want to discuss. “And so I was prepared to kill myself that morning.”
Erisman saw therapists and took anti-depressants. But the drugs were making him worse. Fast forward to last July 4, and he was not alone in harm’s way.
“I got so angry, I almost beat [my wife Jennifer] until the rage ended,” Erisman said. “And that’s how mad I was. And then we came home and I was so mad that I was going to kill myself in our bed, just to make her find me to punish her.”
Erisman said only through divine intervention did he not act on his impulses. He started seeing Karen Morris, P.A., and started taking a relatively new medication indicated for treatment-resistant depression.
It’s called Spravato, designed for people with depression that does not respond to more conventional therapies.
Spravato comes as a nasal inhaler that involves ketamine. It’s a Schedule III drug, and is kept under lock and key at Chesapeake Psychological Associates. You can’t take Spravato home with you and it must be administered by a medical professional.
“When I took it, it was an immediate effect. It was night and day,” Erisman said.
“I had my husband back,” Jennifer Erisman said. “To see him smile, and to laugh, and to see things that I haven’t seen in years gave me hope.”
But that hope was dashed about six weeks ago.
The Defense Health Agency has changed the way Spravato gets to providers, installing a new distribution system called buy-and-bill. Providers must first stock up on the medication rather than dispense it on an as-needed basis. TRICARE will still cover it, but now there’s an interim period, leaving Erisman in limbo.
Morris said frustration is building because a proven drug is now harder for her — and her many military patients — to get.
“Unfortunately, we’ve come to a complete halt and we haven’t been able to get this medication for our TRICARE patients at all,” Morris said.
Commercial health plans continue to cover Spravato without a hitch, but not TRICARE.
“They are an outlier,” said Dr. Randy Rhoad, owner of Chesapeake Psychological Associates. “We just had a couple of approvals from Anthem and they seemed to be pretty smooth, but TRICARE has certainly been more of a challenge.”
Morris says bureaucracy is fueling her biggest fear.
“That [Matt] will follow through with suicide,” Morris said. “That right there is terrifying.”
Jennifer Erisman is a retired nurse, and takes her advocacy for her husband as the matter of life and death that it truly is.
“I’m not gonna sit here and actively watch you die,” she said. “I’m gonna do something and use my voice,” she said, and has already contacted Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia Beach) to seek her help in making it easier for suicidal veterans to get Spravato.
